Friday, August 10, 2012

Torture Slaying of the Woman and the Demon Seed

When Trooper Ronald Ruecker pulled into the park­ing lot at the
Columbia City office of Oregon State Police where he worked the swing
shift, he likely thought it would be another routine Sunday of merely
patrolling U.S. Highway 30, occasionally handing out traffic tickets to
speeding motorists en route to Port­land from Astoria or vice versa.
Rueck­er’s territory or jurisdiction wasn’t equally all that exciting.
However, in spite of the mundaneness he had learned to count upon,
Ruecker, like all lawmen, was trained to expect the unexpected. What he
unexpectedly encountered on this particular Sunday was unlike
any­thing he’d ever experienced before; it was so horrible that it
would likely haunt him the rest of his life.
The homicide which occurred in Columbia County on Valentine’s Day,
February 14, 1982 was so horrendously brutal that most area residents
are reluc­tant to talk about it, preferring instead to simply try and
forget that it ever hap­pened. But happened it did, and the story you
are about to read on the pages of this magazine is not the “toned-down”
ver­sion which appeared in the newspapers. Instead it is the shocking,
bizarre, un­varnished account of a homicidal rage of such unleashed
savagery that ultimately ended the life of a young woman and her unborn
child.
It had been raining off and on through­out most of the day, and the
fact that the sky was overcast with clouds brought on the darkness
earlier than usual as the afternoon turned into early evening. Trooper
Ruecker was driving south on Highway 30 towards the small commu­nity of
Scappoose when he spotted two dark figures outlined by the dim
periph­eral rays from his car’s headlights lying several feet apart on
the hillside opposite him. Were there two people lying there? He made a
U-turn and pulled onto the soft shoulder of the road. It was difficult
to tell what was lying there, as his vision was impaired by the
darkness, the falling rain and the motion from his car’s wind­shield
wipers. He decided to investigate further.
As he put on his “Smokey Bear” hat and grabbed his heavy duty
flashlight, Trooper Ruecker noted that he was only a few yards from the
entrance to Colum­bia Memorial Gardens, a cemetery which lay just over
the hillside he was about to check out. He had an eerie feel­ing that
night, he later said in retrospect during an interview, as he headed
toward the first dark figure. Upon reaching it, however, Ruecker
discovered that it was merely a backpack, gold in color with a blue
jacket draped over one end of it. It looked as if the backpack had been
soiled or stained in certain areas, but with only the limited
illumination from his flash­light it was difficult to discern just what
the stains consisted of.
Using his flashlight to guide him through the darkness Trooper
Ruecker proceeded toward the second figure, which was lying in some
grass above the highway from the gold backpack. He soon discovered,
however, that it was just another backpack, green in color with another
blue jacket draped over it and a stocking cap lying next to it. It was
at this point that Ruecker thought he’d heard a voice in the distance
and, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused, he climbed up the embankment,
crossed a set of railroad tracks and entered the northwestern edge of
the cemetery.
He could hear the voice more clearly now and was able to discern that
it was that of a male. As he approached the voice he saw a human
figure, silhouetted by the darkness, kneeling over another human figure,
but it was too dark to see what was happening.
At this point, however, Ruecker could hear the male voice saying,
“It’s okay, man, it’s okay,” but he was unable to determine if the male
subject was speak­ing to him or to the figure lying on the ground.
As he got closer, Ruecker shined his light on the two figures and saw
that the kneeling person had his thumbs pushed firmly into the eyes of
the other person, rotating his thumbs in a circular motion until one
of the person’s eyeballs popped about an inch out of its socket!
Horrified at what he saw, Ruecker knew that the person had to either
be dead or unconscious because the person made no movement and made no
sound. No one, he reasoned, could withstand that kind of pain if he or
she was alive and conscious.

At that point the man got up, looked at Ruecker and started moving
toward the trooper. Ruecker stayed calm, keeping his flashlight’s beam
on the man, but nonetheless placed his hand firmly on his holstered
gun. Not knowing what state of mind the man was in, Ruecker began
talking to him and persuaded him to go with him. On the way to the
patrol car, the man began to resist, even though he was handcuffed, but
Ruecker put his hand on his gun and tightened his grip on the man with
the other. He decided to go along peaceably.
When he had the man locked safely inside his patrol car, Ruecker
noted that his captive’s long, brown and curly shoulder-length hair, as
well as his face, hands, and clothing, were literally covered in blood.
Although the man, in his late teens or early twenties, was wearing a
T-shirt and jeans, Ruecker thought it odd that he was wearing socks but
no shoes.
Deciding not to speak with the young man at this point, Ruecker
called in for back-up help and returned to the cemet­ery to determine
exactly what the situa­tion was there.
Using his flashlight, Ruecker saw that the human form lying on the
ground was a young, dark-haired female, now quite dead, who had most
assuredly suc­cumbed to her injuries before Ruecker arrived at the
scene. Although she was now severely mutilated, Ruecker gues­sed that
she had been quite pretty. But now, in her present unsightly state, the
young woman was difficult to look at without becoming nauseous. Just
the same, Ruecker took note of his observa­tions while he waited for
back-up per­sonnel to arrive.
He noted that the victim was lying flat on her back, her legs bent so
that her knees and thighs extended upward with her feet planted firmly
on the ground, her heels nearly touching her buttocks. She was wearing
a T-shirt which read, ” All natural ingredients. No artificial
sweeteners, no preservatives added,” with a bra underneath. She was also
wearing blue jeans and panties, both of which were pulled down below
her knees, exposing her genitals, and was wearing tennis shoes and two
pairs of socks, one pink and one blue one pulled over two yellow socks.
In addition, holes were noted in the groin area of the elastic band of
her pants, and there were sec­tions of a fishing pole protruding from
her vagina!
Already aghast at what he saw, Ruecker was shocked still further when
he observed that the victim’s feet were tied together with rope or
cord, and the suspect had used slip knots on rope or cord to bind the
victim’s wrists and neck in such a manner that if the victim strug­gled
the ropes would tighten around her neck and choke her. Abdominal wounds
were also discernible, as were wounds to her eyes and nose.
A short time later, additional Oregon State Police units arrived at
the scene, as did Columbia County District Attorney Martin Sells and his
chief investigator, Dalton Derrick. After their observations of the
crime scene and the victim, Sells and Derrick turned the scene over to
evi­dence technicians from the Oregon State Police crime labs in
Portland. Dalton De­rrick and
Trooper Michael Roberg, crim­inal investigator from the Columbia City
office of the Oregon State Police, were assigned to handle the
investigation.
Located under the victim’s buttocks the investigators discovered two
very large extensively rusted nails, which technician Chris Johnson,
directing crime lab operation, placed and labeled in an appropriate
container for transport back to the labs in Portland. Also found in the
same location were two bloodstained sections of a fishing rod, eight
inches long and the other six inches in length. They also found two
bloodstained, broken and spent sections Fussee, commonly called a
roadside flare.
Trooper Roberg took photos of crime scene, including shots of the
victim from every imaginable angle. He also took photos of the suspect,
who had a large amount of blood over both eyes and blood spattered over
his face. It noted by investigators that the suspect had several
circular type wounds near center of his right palm, and that hands were
also bloody. His hands were also photographed.
The suspect’s clothing was confiscated at the crime scene to prevent
destruction or loss of evidence, and patrol car in which he had been
secured was impounded and taken to the police crime labs where it would
be processed in search of strands of the victim’s hair, which the
investigators belie may have been present on the suspect’s clothes and
had fallen off inside the car They weren’t going to take any chances on
losing potential evidence, no matter how minute it might be.
In the meantime, the suspect was taken to a local hospital — all the
while being reminded of his rights — where urine and blood samples were
taken to determine whether drugs of any kind were present. He was also
interrogated briefly, after which fingernail scrapings were obtained.
He was transferred hooked into the Columbia County Jail St. Helens, and
was identified as 20-year-old Delmar Anholt Jr. of Portia.

Meanwhile, back at the cemetery, investigators were still gathering
evidence when Columbia County Medical Examiner Dr. John Brookhart
arrived at scene to make a preliminary or superficial examination to
make sure it was okay to move the body and get it ready for transport
to Portland where a definitive autopsy would be performed by state
medical examiner.
Brookhart noted that there were external wounds resulting from
multiple punctures to the lower abdomen, there were superficial
abrasions as was severe burns in the area of the victim’ anus and
vagina. He noted the presence of a metal spike that was embedded in
right pelvic region, and noted that a fishing pole extruded from the
victim’s vagina.
There were also multiple puncture wounds of the face and both eyes,
as well as lacerations and abrasions of the vic­tim’s nose and face. He
entered into his records that the victim was pregnant at the time of
her death, and that the unborn child had also died. He made note of the
fact that the victim’s hands and feet were bound with cord and, after
taking a rectal temperature, the victim’s body was placed inside a
yellow body bag and taken to the Multnomah County Morgue in Portland.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” said Columbia County District
Attorney Martin Sells, commenting on his observation of the homicide
victim upon arrival at the crime scene: “The victim was eight and a half
months pregnant. There were these ten-penny spikes used for
construction (authorities later learned the suspect used them for tent
spikes) jabbed into her abdomen, all the way in there. The spikes were
eight or nine inch­es long (and as big in diameter as a man’s little
finger, blunt or dull on the ends). Her eyes were gouged out, way down
deep into the sinuses, and her nose was practically cut off.
“Just about everything you could do to a person he (the suspect)
did,” said Sells. “At that point in time (when Ruecker entered the scene
and saw the suspect kneeling over the victim), I think the officer did
a terrific job,” said Sells in retrospect.
Sells said that additional evidence taken by the crime labs included
the two backpacks found by Trooper Ruecker, which had been stained with
blood, a black stocking cap, a burlap sack, ciga­rette rolling papers,
three very large ex­tensively rusted nails (in addition to those found
under the victim’s buttocks), a bloodstained white comb, 30 inches of
bloodstained white cotton rope and addi­tional sections of fishing
rods, both ends broken with bloodstains and tissue adhering to the
distal ends. Additionally, said Sells, it had been determined that the
bloody jeans of the suspect had been stained with her own blood as had
her multi-colored long sleeved shirt.
According to D.A. Sells, in­vestigators identified the victim as 19
­year-old Tara Lea McCarthy, the sus­pect’s girlfriend. Inquiries into
her back­ground revealed that Tara came from a rather large family of
five kids, and that she had lived in the St. Johns area of North
Portland. She had gone to school at Roosevelt High, where she had met
Anholt through a relative.
When she was 15, Tara’s family de­cided to move away from St. Johns,
but Tara refused to leave with them. She insisted on remaining there so
that she could finish high school at Roosevelt. She was invited to
live with Anholt and his family while she continued school. Her parents
eventually agreed to that arrangement, and she moved in with the
Anholts. The investigators learned that it wasn’t long before she and
Anholt began sleeping together.
A background check on Anholt re­vealed that he attended a Catholic
school until the seventh grade, at which time he began to use and abuse
marijuana and tobacco. He was a poor student in high school, in and out
of trouble until he was eventually suspended from Roosevelt. As a
result, he did not graduate.
Although he came from a good, re­spected family, Anholt’s home life
was nothing he could brag about due, pri­marily, to his own
self-centered actions. Things got continually worse and, at one point,
Anholt threatened to kill his sister. As a result, his mother called the
juvenile detention authorities and he was placed in a detention home
for a few months. It was also revealed that, at one point in his youth,
he was sent to a place called Sun Village, a school for youths in
trouble.
At one point, while living with Tara, Anholt was charged and
convicted of first-degree theft and placed on proba­tion. However, he
violated the con­ditions of his probation and was sent­enced to Oregon
Correctional Institution for 14 months. Tara was true to him during this
time and visited him often, when she could get a day off from var­ious
waitress jobs she held while going to school and living with Anholt’s
rela­tives.

When Anholt got out of Oregon Cor­rectional Institution, detectives
learned, he very rarely worked. When he did, it was for a very short
time, often only a half day at a time. Instead, when he wasn’t getting
into trouble for criminal mischief, he did a lot of fishing, camping
and wandering around, with Tara accompanying him nearly everywhere he
went.
During the course of her relationship with Anholt, the cops learned,
Tara be­came pregnant four known times. The first time, Anholt sent her
to an abortion clinic in Seattle somebody had told him about, where
she had the pregnancy ter­minated. Anholt demanded that she have her
second and third pregnancies aborted also, and near the delivery date
of her fourth pregnancy Anholt killed her and attempted to take the
baby, which he believed, wrongly, belonged to another man.
The investigators also uncovered, dur­ing their probing, allegations
made by acquaintances of Anholt that he was an occultist, that he and
others went out on one occasion and somehow obtained a cow or a calf and
butchered it during some sort of ritual. However, the investigators
were unable to establish just how deeply involved he was with the
occult, and as a result were not able to establish a link between his
alleged occult activities and the torture-murder of Tara McCarthy.
Following a thorough autopsy on the victim’s body by Dr. William
Brady, state medical examiner, the facts of the case became even more
grisly with each of his findings. According to Brady, Tara had injuries
to both of her eyes, to her nose, cheek and lips. Both of her eyes were
bruised and swollen, indicat­ing the application of force against the
eyeballs, and there were lacerations across the victim’s left upper
eyelid. Puncture wounds present near her eyes extended down into the
girl’s face and sinuses to a depth of an inch or more. Her lips were cut
and bruised, and her tongue was clenched tightly between her teeth, an
indication that she endured extreme pain prior to her death.
Brady’s conclusion was that the vic­tim died from asphyxia by
strangulation and by piercing of her body with a fish­ing pole, causing
the injuries to the uter­us and to the liver. Aside from complete
dismemberment and decapitation cases, Brady said this was the most
severe case of mutilation that he had ever seen.
In the meantime, lab tests performed on Delmar Anholt’s blood samples
taken shortly after his arrest revealed that he had taken
methamphetamines and amphetamines, both of which are powerful forms of
speed. Also, after being charged and indicted for murder, Anholt was
examined by Medford, Oregon psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Gardner at the request
of the prosecutor.
Dr. Gardner found that Anholt didn’t have a value system that is
normally associated with maturity, citing as example that Anholt once
quit a construction job in order to spend the money that he’d made.
Gardner said that Anholt also told him that he bought drugs such as
valium, speed, pot and beer just make him feel good, but said that he
didn’t like heroin or cocaine.
Dr. Gardner also said that Anholt bragged about his sex life at
first, but later told him that he started masturbating when he was in
his early teens an had had intercourse with only two different females,
one of whom was his victim and the other an older woman he’d had sex
with when he was younger.
Gardner’s diagnosis of Anholt was that he manifested an anti-social
personality, was narcissistic and self-centered, and held no value for
human life other than his own. According to Gardner, drugs did not
interfere with Anholt’s ability to form the intent to commit the murder
of Tara Lea McCarthy or anything else that he wanted to do.
While lodged in the Columbia County Jail, Anholt was interrogated by
investigators Derrick and Roberg several times, and during the course
of the sessions the officers learned that there had been some explosive
arguments be­tween Anholt and some of his relatives regarding an
inheritance left by his de­ceased father. It was after one such
argu­ment, the cops were told, that Anholt and Tara decided to take off
on a trip to Long Beach, Washington to stay at his fami­ly’s beach
cabin. Anholt said they were leaving because “everything was com­ing
down in the city. All the sluts, whores and prostitutes were going to
get it.” Anholt told the detectives that he and Tara then packed up
their sleeping bags, backpacks, and other camping gear and left the
house, hitching a ride on North Willamette Boulevard in Portland near
the University of Portland campus. Anholt said that he and Tara had been
picked up by a motorist driving a pickup truck, and that they had been
taken as far as a tavern in Linnton, just outside the Portland city
limits. Anholt said that the driver of the pickup was carrying two small
puppies, one of which was given to Tara at her request.

Anholt added that he and Tara contin­ued hitchhiking toward the
coast, and were eventually picked up by a man driv­ing another pickup.
This time they got as far as Scappoose (about 10 miles west of Linnton)
when the pickup broke down and had to be towed. They had been dropped
off near the cemetery.
Derrick and Roberg began checking out Anholt’s story, to see if any
of it could be corroborated. They eventually located the driver of the
first vehicle, who told them basically what Anholt had said. The driver
said they talked, smoked a joint of pot and stopped at a store for a
can of beer on their way to Linnton. Eventually they stopped at the
tavern, which was the driver’s destination.
Derrick and Roberg then checked with the local wrecking yard in
Scappoose and learned that a pickup had been towed in for repair on the
day in question, Feb­ruary 14th. After obtaining the pickup owner’s
name and address from the wrecking yard they contacted him and, again,
Anholt’s story was corroborated. The driver told the investigators that
he had picked up two hitchhikers and their dog.
During the interviews Anholt told De­rrick and Roberg that he and
Tara came upon an old barn, not far from the cemet­ery, and went inside
to get out of the rain for awhile. He told the cops that inside the
barn there was an old mattress on the floor, a table and a couple of
chairs. Anholt said that he was wearing a knife and scabbard on his
belt that day, but had lost it, probably inside the barn. Anholt said
that he had been thinking about us­ing the knife on Tara.
“Roberg and I went out and we found this barn,” said Derrick. “We
went in and there was a mattress on the floor, and there were the table
and chairs, and his knife was lying beside the mattress.”
According to Investigator Derrick, from statements obtained from
Anholt, Tara and Anholt finally left the barn and walked on down the
road toward St. Helens. About a quarter of a mile later, they entered
the cemetery, located on the opposite side of the road from the barn. It
was while walking through the cemetery that Anholt said he asked Tara
to confess to Jesus Christ and God, which she re­fused to do. “It was
here that he did her in,” said Derrick, because she was carrying” the
demon seed.”
“It (the baby) was the devil and had to be taken care of,” said
District Attorney Sells, ” which appeared to be what his motive was…the
way he murdered her was brutal, but a lot of it (the violence) was
directed toward the baby inside her womb. This time she wanted to have
that baby,” he said, referring to her previous pregnancies and
abortions.
“He (Anholt) claimed that she had a bad seed in her, that she had
been fooling around on him,” said Investigator De­rrick. “We checked
back on that and found that she was almost nine months pregnant at the
time of her death. She was carrying a full-term baby, which was due any
day. So we checked back beyond that and found that she had left him on
several prior occasions because he was mean to her. She’d gone to live
with her sister on one or more occasions, and had gone to stay with
friends on other occasions. Two or three months prior to her becoming
pregnant, she had left him and lived with a girlfriend for about three
weeks. During this time she had gone out with another guy, told An­holt
that she had sexual relations with this other guy. Well, Anholt claimed
(when she became pregnant by him) that it was a ‘bad seed,’ wasn’t his
baby.”
“But you could prove that she hadn’t become pregnant by the other guy
due to the passage or lapse of time,” said D.A. Sells, who said she
had purportedly had sexual relations with the other guy two or three
months prior to becoming preg­nant.
“So we backtracked by talking with the other guy she’d been with,”
said Derrick, “and with friends she’d stayed with. She was gone for
about three weeks, and the rest of the time she was always with Anholt,
who absolutely did not want her to have that baby.”
Was the intent to kill present inside the mind of the suspect at the time of the homicide? Was the killing premeditated?
“Dr. Gardner (the psychiatrist who examined Anholt) believed Anholt
formed the intent quite some time before he did it,” said Derrick. “He
(Anholt) told us he thought about it while they were sitting in the barn
across from the cemetery. I’m sure he formed the intent earlier,
probably prior to leaving Port­land, maybe even thought about it for
several days beforehand.”
“An interesting question was raised (due to the killing) because
there were two murders that took place,” said D.A. Sells, “the baby and
the mother.” But under Oregon law, the definition of a human being
prohibited us from pro­secuting on the part of the baby because,
according to definition of the law, it wasn’t yet born. But when he
began the acts which led to (Tara’s) murder, he actually induced labor
and the baby came out of the victim’s uterus. But it couldn’t get into
the vaginal canal (because of the foreign objects inserted into the
vagina), and it didn’t have anywhere to go, so the baby either
suffocated or drowned. But had the definition of a human being been
different, we could have prosecuted him for two murders.”
“He (Anholt) said when he got to the cemetery,” said Investigator
Derrick, recalling portions of Anholt’s state­ments, ” he was looking at
this big mural painted on the cemetery’s mausoleum, which is not far
from where the killing occurred. The mural depicts Jesus with a flock of
sheep. That’s when he said he decided to kill her, and he told her so.
She took off running through the cemet­ery with Anholt in pursuit. He
caught her, knocked her down. He said he pun­ched her in the stomach
several times.
“After tying her up in such a manner that whenever she struggled by
pulling her hands and arms, a rope would tighten around her neck and
choke her,” contin­ued Derrick, “he got into his backpack, took out the
spikes and drove them into her body. He said he intended to bury her
there in the cemetery, but he got caught before he could get the job
done.”
Did Anholt ever say why he tortured Tara so, rather than just kill her quickly and be done with it?
“His intent was to kill that ‘demon seed’ inside of her,” said
Derrick, “and he directed most of his actions toward that baby, her
entire abdominal area. He was angry because he had to bite the skin, to
make holes in it so he could drive those spikes in there. He had the
imprint of the head of one of those spikes in the palm of his hand where
he was pounding them with his hand to drive them into her body. He had
her blood all over his face and hands. He said his intent wasn’t to
kill Tara, but he had to kill that ‘demon seed’ inside of her, and she
had to go along with the baby.
According to Derrick, none of the spikes which injured the victim’s
face penetrated the brain. Although the spikes entered only into the
sinus cavities, De­rrick said the medical examiner believed that,
although those wounds were not fatal, they were likely the most painful
of the entire ordeal.
“He (eventually) went down to the highway with the backpacks and laid
them on the embankment,” continued Derrick. That’s when Trooper
Ruecker came along and discovered the back­packs, lying several feet
apart on the embankment, and explains why they were stained with the
victim’s blood. “He said he came back to make sure she was dead but she
was still convulsing, so he decided he’d better finish her off and he
got back on top of her and went to work again. That’s when Trooper
Ruecker found them.”
One of the defenses used at the trial, said D.A. Sells, was that
Anholt was high on drugs and didn’t know what he was doing when he
killed Tara. That defense was easily countered by Sells, however.
“From what Anholt told us,” said Sells, “and from what everyone else
said who was with him prior to the murder, we could determine
approximately how much marijuana and amphetamines he’d had. Based on
that, the psychiatrist and other doctors could give an opinion as to
whether or not he’d taken enough drugs so that he couldn’t think or
rationalize or form the intent (to commit murder). And they all agreed
and would testify that Anholt di­dn’t have enough drugs that would
pre­vent him from being able to form the intent (to murder).”
On May 11, 1982, Delmar Anholt Jr. was convicted of the
torture-murder of Tara Lee McCarty. On May 25th, Columbia County Circuit
Judge James A. Mason sentenced Anholt to life in prison. However, it
should be noted that because of the utilization of a matrix system, the
State Parole Board will de­termine the actual time served.